The Tiger and the Wolf (28 page)

Loud Thunder travelled with his sled, Matt and Yoff pulling it
swiftly over ground that was still deep with packed snow. He
travelled on his human feet, and Maniye loped alongside him,
outpacing him and coming back for him, with Hesprec sleeping
or plotting inside her pack.

The bear would have moved faster, she reckoned, and, when
they camped on the first night, she asked Loud Thunder if he
stayed human because of the dogs.

He shook his great head. ‘They know me. They smell my soul
on me. Shape of the body doesn’t matter.’ His face took on one
of those slightly embarrassed expressions of his, a big man
making a small admission. ‘The bear, it gets distracted: smells,
hunger . . . and it doesn’t care about time. It’s been on lean pickings all winter, or it’s slept. It needs more to eat than a man. If I
Stepped, I’d be foraging all the time. I’d forget.’

She stared into his face, understanding that, living alone, he
must hear the call of his bear soul asking him to give up his
hands and his language and walk off into the wilds forever. It
was the fate of the old and the grieving. Before now she had not
thought of it as the fate of the lonely.

She guessed that there were not so many Cave Dwellers compared to the people of the Wolf or the Deer or the Boar, and
perhaps that was one reason why. She tried to imagine what it
would be like to have such a powerful totem as the Bear, and to
be able to take on a body of casually superhuman strength and
endurance. The temptation never to return to human form must
grow strong in these harsh places.

Even in human shape, Loud Thunder’s Bear nature made
him strong. For all she could outrun him, he would still be
trudging indefatigably at the end of the day, when even the dogs
seemed tired. Each night they would travel an hour past dusk
before he finally picked out some sheltered spot in which to
build a fire.

After a winter spent within an arm’s length of a hearth, Hesprec had not taken well to the cold. When he was seated with
them at the fire, he coughed intermittently: a thin, fluid sound.
The ruddy light of the flames touched on his sallow skin, his
hollow cheeks.

Most nights, Loud Thunder fell asleep as soon as the camp
was laid, trusting to the fire to keep away inquisitive beasts.
Maniye and Hesprec were both more concerned about inquisitive
people
– and of course Broken Axe would be trailing them,
invisible and silent and yet always present in her mind. The
equinox, at the Stone Place, would mark the end of his promise,
the return of his hunt. She could only hope that he would not
try to seize her in front of all the priests of the Crown of the
World. It might seem an act to invite bad fortune, but Broken
Axe was a man who would dare anything.

They shared the watches, the two of them. Her keen wolf
nose alternated with whatever alien senses a coiled serpent could
muster; that was all they had against the hostile world. When it
was her turn to sleep, she tucked herself against Loud Thunder’s
slumbering bulk for warmth. When it was Hesprec’s, he slid his
sinuous form into her pack and curled up there.

Most nights, when she was left the only one awake, she tried
to think of what best to do. Living in Loud Thunder’s shadow,
she had not needed a plan, and each day had drawn in the next
without any concern save to survive the winter. Now she was
forced to confront the fact, once again, that she had no plan, no
thought for the future save to move on into it and never retrace
her steps. She was aware that everything she did only bought
her a little more sunlight. That night must close on her was inevitable: whether it was captivity or death at the hands of her own
people, or the inexorable rift between her souls.

He had already lost valuable time, because he had bid his
retinue lie in wait for Akrit Stone River. It was plain that the
shedding of one man’s blood now might spare the lives of many
others later, if the Wolf should find itself tearing at its own.

But Stone River was a canny hunter, a man who had grown
old and cunning during times of war and peace. He had found
another route, even here in the heart of Many Mouths territory,
so that Water Gathers had waited in vain.

The southerners and their guides had passed by though, and
he had been on the point of ordering an attack on them, remembering the death of Sure As Flint and the humiliation that it had
brought with it.

Recollection of that yellow-eyed monster which the black
man had turned into had stayed his hand.Who knew what losses
such a creature might inflict; who knew what the black man’s
friends could do? He had been burned before by not knowing.
Now he found that something else held him back. He would not
acknowledge it as fear, so perhaps it was wisdom.

Every tribe of the Wolf, indeed every tribe of the Crown of
the World, would have eyes present at the Stone Place. Water
Gathers would speak to them all there, one by one, in the name
of his departed and respected father. He would court the Swift
Backs and the Moon Eaters, and he would tell stories of Stone
River’s weakness. What was a man without sons, after all? Be he
never so great a warrior or a hunter, how could he call himself a
man when his seed was weak?

Akrit Stone River was leading his pack through the dense forest,
following a curving path towards the Stone Place. He had seen
the look in Water Gathers’ eyes, and he had weighed the odds.
Seven Skins’ son could bring more warriors than he himself
had, certainly, but could he bring the strength of will? The
chance of turning that suspected ambush back on itself was
tempting, just to rid the world of his strongest rival.

But, in the end, he set his path away from the easy trails leading from the Many Mouths village. He told himself he did not
like the odds. He told himself that if Water Gathers escaped,
then there would be open war between their tribes and that
would profit nobody except the Tiger.

He did not want to kill the son of his old friend, for Seven
Skins had at times been something like a father to him. Even
though he was no blood-kin of Water Gathers, still the act felt
too much like kinslaying.

Akrit’s people travelled armed and armoured – the weight of
iron and bronze did not slow down the wolf in them once they
had shed their human shapes. They took the nights without
fires, huddled together for warmth. They brought down what
game they came across, and stayed as briefly as they could to
gorge on it before setting forth again. Young deer, they took:
bucks too reckless to know fear, too slow to escape. And some of
the deer they took were men: errant herders and foragers caught
unawares between the trees. All were as one to the Wolf.
They travelled by night and by day, breaking to sleep at irregular intervals, two or three days apart, making up in speed what
they lost by their tortuous route. Always one or two were ranging further from the pack, pushing themselves ahead or stringing
outwards to the sides, keeping a sharp eye out for the Many
Mouths.

It was not Water Gathers’ people who eventually found them.
Towards the end of their journey, after many days travelling, a
familiar figure was abruptly pacing Akrit, loping easily alongside
him as though he had never left.

Akrit fetched to a halt, his people forming an uncertain scattering behind him. For a moment he looked into the pale eyes of
the wolf before him and fully expected a challenge.
What has
changed since I was last home?

But then the newcomer Stepped, hands open to signify
peace, and Akrit followed suit.
‘Broken Axe,’ he named the man. ‘How goes your hunt?’

Where three rivers and the run-off from a score of hillsides met,
the land was boggy all throughout the year, and the first melt of
spring transformed it into a great swamp so vast and hungry it
could have swallowed the world. No tribes lived here, though the
swamp was rich and fecund enough that many came to gather
and fish. And sometimes they died there, when the shifting
ground ebbed suddenly from beneath their feet. It was said that
the quicksands did not even let animal souls escape. True or not,
enough had died there in their human shapes, smothering in the
mud, that the swamp was crowded with ghosts. Priests travelled
there to draw secrets from that buried mother-lode of the dead.
On some nights even the least sensitive could see the lost souls
drifting over the treacherous ground, glowing with pale fire.

In the heart of the swamp there was a great island: no natural
thing, it had been raised by the hands of men in an earlier age,
earth set upon earth until they had conquered even the hunger
of the swamp. Those ancients had raised a causeway towards it,
a narrow processional path that was the only fixed and safe road
through the quagmire. They had fetched the stones, the monoliths of bluish rock hewn from the mountains of the north. They
had hauled them over the miles of rugged, broken ground, and
they had floated them across the marsh, and then had set them
upright on the island.

Knowledge of whose hands had wrought all of this was lost.
Every tribe claimed the marvel for their own forebears. Looking
down the causeway’s length to that island, Maniye felt an abrupt
certainty that it had been not one tribe but many. Somehow
there had been a time, forgotten over the generations, when the
peoples of the Crown of the World had come together united.
And when they had stood together in one place, not even the
earth nor the seasons nor the great spirits had been able to curtail their ambitions. They had remade the world.

That thought came to her almost with the force of a physical
thing, stopping her in her tracks so that Hesprec and Loud
Thunder walked on a little and then turned, each wearing his
own frown. For a moment she felt that she had come upon an
absolute certainty, although she could not have mustered a
single argument to defend it. She felt that some invisible ghost
of the marsh had whispered a secret truth to her.

She also had no intention of exposing herself to the mockery
of either of the men, and so she skipped along to catch them up,
and would not respond to their questions.

There were others travelling to the Stone Place, but not so
many. This was not a gathering for all the tribes, just priests and
their retinues. She could see tents set on the island already, in
separate little huddles. There would be plenty of old rivalries
there around the ring of the stones. Everyone would be very
careful not to draw down the ire of the spirits, not to foul the
coming year for themselves and their people. But, at the same
time, everyone would keep one hand close to a knife hilt while
the priests indulged in their contests of magic, riddles and lore.

There would be sacrifices, so she had heard. Back at the village, the Winter Runners told that the great spirit of the swamp
itself must always be paid its due: living bodies sunk into its
depths with halters about their necks.

If the other two had shown the faintest reluctance, then she
would have allowed herself second thoughts. Loud Thunder just
kept shambling along as though he had not noticed where they
were, though. His dogs trotted at his heels, with the empty sled
dragging behind them.

And Hesprec . . . a change had come over the old Serpent
ever since they had reached the edge of the marsh. She wondered what he saw now with his priestly eyes. For him, did the
waters hold the empty faces of the drowned dead? Did the air
glow palely with the power of this place? His spine was straighter
than it had been, his head held high. A look had come to his face
that she did not like: hard and cruel and
old
, in a way he had not
looked old before. Old like stories. Old like the Stone Place itself.

Then he caught her looking at him, and something in her
expression made him smile and shrug, just the same old vagrant
she had fled across the Crown of the World with. But that other
look returned once he thought she was not looking.

‘What will you do?’ The sound of her own voice seemed an
intrusion, and she felt the still waters soak it up and resent it.
She needed to break out of her own thoughts though. She had
never counted herself as someone sensitive to the invisible world
before, but their approach to the Stone Place was weighing on
her in a strange way.

‘I must speak to my Mother,’ Thunder muttered sullenly. ‘But
perhaps there is somewhere I can take you, before then?’
There was pitiful hope there, as he seized on any excuse to
put off his own duty, but she could think of no answer. She had
hoped that she might just tag along with him. Apparently that
was not an option.
‘There are people Hesprec must see,’ she announced proudly,
trying to show off at least a little reflected glory. Then she
caught the Serpent’s expression and flinched from it. ‘What?’
‘Little one,’ he told her carefully, ‘I seek the secret wisdom of
the priests, if they will part with it. To my ears alone they may
speak.’
A shock of betrayal went through her. ‘Then what am I supposed to do?’
‘I would ask that you wait for me.’ He had the grace to look
embarrassed. ‘I am sorry, but you are no priest. These matters
are deep and terrible. Happier for you that you do not know
them.’
‘So it’s better for me to know that something “deep and terrible” is going on, but not what it is?’ Maniye demanded.
Loud Thunder chuckled. ‘I think she is more than ready for
your secrets, old man.’
Hesprec hissed in exasperation. ‘If I go as a priest from the
River, and alone, then perhaps they might speak to me – if they
do not kill me. If there is any respect left in all of this cold land.
If I go with a fugitive Wolf girl, then they will see me as part of
their feuds and rivalries and little wars, and they will judge me,
and close their minds against me, and I shall learn nothing. And
they will have one more reason to do harm to me. I have travelled—’
‘For a thousand years over a hundred mountains and twenty
deserts and under the earth, and all the rest of the nonsense,’
agreed Thunder. ‘Girl, when I go to my Mother, I will find you
a hearth amongst her people. They will feed you and shelter
you, while I do what I must do there.’
Maniye took a few quick steps until she was ahead of him
and could look up into his face. ‘Why?’
He smiled a little – which was as much as he ever really
smiled. ‘Why are you not dead in the snow, Many Tracks?’
The words, and his using Broken Axe’s name for her, made
her skitter backwards, until her heels were at the causeway’s very
edge. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Why are you not back with your kin, as their prisoner? Why
did I not cast you into winter’s teeth after you outstayed your
welcome?’ Still he was smiling, but for a moment she could not
read him, or square his words with that expression. Then he
made an expansive gesture, taking in himself, and her, and invisible connections to the rest of the world. ‘Look at you: how you
will not give up, you will not go away. Everything in the world
you take between your teeth and shake it, to see what use to you
it will be.You are a fierce little hunter, Maniye Many Tracks.You
remind me of why I went south when I was young.’

She saw Wolf tents on the island, several groupings of them. The
sight had her creeping in Loud Thunder’s shadow, almost under
his feet. Of course there would be Wolves here: the Moon Eaters
lived close, and she saw banners that she thought were Swift
Backs, too. And the Winter Runners, of course. Her home was
south of here, but not so very far. Most likely Kalameshli himself would be present.

Would he try to seize her, even here, under the stern gaze of
the invisible world? If he could catch her alone, she guessed he
might, but not as long as she stayed in company. Likewise
Broken Axe, who must surely either be here or be close behind
her. They would have to wait until the gathering was over.

She thought this, and then she examined her own thinking.
Kalameshli Takes Iron was a cruel man, the tormentor of her
childhood, the man who drove her before him with a switch. He
would not be here alone: a handful of hunters, at least, would
have come as his pack. Would he not just take what he wanted,
as the Winter Runners so often did?

And yet she did not quite believe it. It was the aura of the
Stone Place; the air was thick with it. She could feel the tenuous
balance of this place, and she knew nobody would wish to disturb it, to have it lash back across them like a bowstring.
I am
more of a priest than you know, old man
, she thought, remembering Hesprec’s dismissive words.

There were other little camps too. One was just a single
ungainly tent composed of overlapping hides stitched over a
round frame that stood almost twice Maniye’s height. There
were a couple of hearths set out in the open nearby, and some
mounds of fur that Maniye assumed were just piles of hides.
Then one of them moved, and she realized that she was looking
at the Cave Dwellers.

There were no more than half a dozen there, and all of those
she saw were men. There were none quite as big as Loud Thunder nor as tall as Lone Mountain, but every one of them was
huge, nonetheless.

‘Old man,’ Loud Thunder said, as they drew near, ‘you had
best come meet my Mother. If you are looking for wisdom, then
she is more wise than any other in the Crown of the World. If I
ask it, she will speak with you – and probably not kill you.’

They arrived among the Cave Dwellers in a flurry of dogs. As
Mat and Yoff drew close, there were a dozen of them already on
their feet and barking uproariously. Thunder’s dogs were no
better, the pair straining at the sled’s traces until he let them run
free. Maniye feared the animals would tear each other apart, but
it was simply that she had never lived with dogs before. The
yapping chaos was resolved as simple greetings, Mat and Yoff
renewing their acquaintance with their relatives. The Bear tribe
themselves had a rather more reserved greeting for their wayward son. One by one, the big men stood up, faces closed and
sullen, staring as Loud Thunder drew near. Then, with shocking
suddenness, they were all bears, standing tall on their hind legs.
Maniye remembered then how he and Lone Mountain had
fought when they met, and she stopped walking and started
backing away. Hesprec was right beside her.

Loud Thunder Stepped as well, but did not slow his pace,
and then all of the Cave Dwellers were bellowing at him, some
dropping down on all fours, some standing as tall as they could.
They seemed to be working themselves up for a fight, and
Maniye could not imagine how Thunder imagined he might win
against so many. He just ambled on, though, and they roared
and shook their jaws at him, and yet none of them quite stood
directly in his way. Then one got too close, and Thunder cuffed
the smaller bear across the muzzle, sending it loping off sideways. The defiance of the others petered out slowly, until Loud
Thunder reached the middle of them and sat down, blithely
unconcerned, scratching at his belly. One by one, the Cave
Dwellers gave up their show of protest, returning to their hulking human shapes and grudgingly giving the newcomer room.
Maniye had the impression that the natural Cave Dweller demeanour was dour to the point of sulking, a people slow to
demonstrate their emotions and slow to act. Looking at them
now, the gathering together of such a weight of muscle and dense
bone, she was glad of it.

‘This girl has my protection,’ Loud Thunder declared, directing a broad hand at her. ‘The old Snake, too. My hearth is their
hearth. They are my guests.’

That went down as poorly as she had anticipated but, now
that he had arrived and established his place amongst them, his
word obviously carried sufficient weight. When she moved to sit
by the fire, they regarded her with dull curiosity, but made
room.

‘Now you wait,’ Thunder advised the pair of them. ‘Now we
all wait. Mother will send for me, and she and I will have our
talk, at last. She will tell me how the world is going to be, and
what it wants with me.’

‘Serpent guide you,’ Hesprec said softly.
‘Old man, this is the Mother of Bears. She could break your
Serpent in one hand. Only thank your god that he drew out
your years long enough to see the Stone Place and its business.’
The Snake priest lowered himself down beside Maniye and
closed his eyes. She wondered if he was preparing himself for
his own promised meeting, whenever that might happen, and
tried to imagine how formidable this woman must be. Certainly
all the Bear tribe were keeping a respectful distance from that
single tent.
‘Will you tell her your stories of Serpent?’ she asked Hesprec.
The old priest shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘Who can say?’
‘Tell me.’
‘Stories of Serpent?’
‘Tell me what you’ve come here to find. Tell me what you
think she knows. Make me understand.’ Because the unseen was
pressing on her eyes, and she felt it was trying to tell her something beyond her comprehension.
But Hesprec just hunched his shoulders and began coughing
again, long enough to leave him weak and gasping.
Thereafter he was plainly too deeply lost within his own
priestliness to have any more time for her, so she got up from
the fire and padded over to where she felt the edge of the Cave
Dweller camp must be. The sky was darkening now, and a little
stubborn snow was feathering down to become one with the
chill waters of the marsh. Little fires had sprung up everywhere
around the island, save for the darkness between the stones
themselves. A grand bonfire was set there, she had seen, but
plainly it was for other purposes than keeping anyone warm.
She narrowed her eyes, examining the other supplicants
arrived here for the equinox. There were broad, heavy-set Boar
people, all layered hides and necklaces of teeth and tusks. She
saw the long limbs of the Deer tribe, a familiar sight to her. Antlers graced the brows of their priests, and at the neighbouring
fire a handful of them were stepping through the movements of
a dance to the low patter of a drum.
A handful of Wolves passed nearby, and she forced herself
not to shrink back. They were Moon Eaters, from their paint
and clothes, and talking quietly amongst themselves. One of
them barked out a brief laugh as they passed, but none spared
her even a glance. Crossing from the other direction came a trio
of Eyriemen, and there was a tense moment when one or other
needed to give way, and neither group would. Then some
unspoken accord was reached, and both bands took an exaggerated step aside, and in the space now between them was the
secret of this place, the same spirit that hung about the stones,
strong and wise and unforgiving.
There were other camps, too, and in the growing dusk it was
hard to make out who kept which hearth. One drew her eye,
though, as if there was a presence at her elbow pointing it out.
The figures there seemed to be warriors, armoured in bronze
polished to a gleaming shine that threw back their firelight.
Somehow she knew they were priests as well. She saw gold
glinting at their wrists and, wherever the fire picked out their
skins, it found them striped with painted shadows.
People of the Tiger.
And a spark was lit in her then that would
not go out.
‘How long will you wait?’ she asked Loud Thunder.
He shrugged morosely. ‘Always, with Mother, it is others who
do the hurrying.’
‘Days?’
‘Most likely.’
She looked across the island, sounding out her own daring.
This was the Stone Place. This was the still centre in the roiling
turmoil that was the Crown of the World.
The voice of the invisible sounded strong within her. It told
her to go explore, to step out from the Bear’s Shadow.The island
seemed alive with it, with a host of sightless entities that wanted
her to move amongst them so that they could see her better. She
could almost feel their spectral fingers trailing across her skin.
At first she meant to wait until morning. The sun was falling
to earth in a welter of spilled red, and soon there would be darkness, with the treacherous marsh on all sides.
And she could not sleep anyway. She lay there, with Hesprec’s bony body curled up on one side of her, and the vast
snoring mountains of the Bears all around, and her mind was
like a leaf bobbing in the waters, constantly dancing and dancing. It came to her then that she had no plan for the future.
Hesprec’s south was a fool’s dream to hold on to, and one that
the old man himself would surely never attain, let alone some
vagrant Wolf girl he might choose to bring along with him. It
came to her then – or at least she finally admitted it to herself
– that Hesprec would die soon. He was hard and stubborn
enough to fend off the winter, but the Crown of the World made
all its guests work hard for the privilege of their keep.
She had come to a place where priests of every tribe were
peering into the mists of the marsh to know the future, while she
just looked ahead and saw a void. She was a creature of the
moment, fleeting and transient.
She Stepped to her wolf’s shape and rose silently, slipping
between the bulky shapes of her hosts, and out into the night.